gays in Cuba

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Tue Aug 6 14:12:32 PDT 2002


Still worth a read is, "Gays Under The Cuban Revolution, " by Allen Young, Grey Fox Press, 1981. Young was a New Left journalist attached to Liberation News Service in the late 60's. (LNS memoirist, Ray Mungo, Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970. Funny. Read it.)

Young was answered by feminist movie critic, B. Ruby Rich in Lourdes Arguelles and B. Ruby Rich, Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Revolution: Notes Toward an Understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay Male Experience, Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. by Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey.

An article I just found when looking for the exact cite for B. Ruby Rich. http://www.hope.edu/delatorre/articles/macho.html
>...History is forged through ones' cojones (balls). Women, non-whites and the poor fail to influence
history because they lack cojones, a gift given to machos by the ultimate Macho, God. To call a man lavándole los blumes de la mujer (one who washes his wife's bloomers) is to question his machismo. "El colmo" (the ultimate sin) is to be called a "maricón" (a derogatory term meaning queer or fag), the antithesis of machismo. We white Cuban elite males look into Lacan's mirror and recognize ourselves as machos through the distancing process of negative self- definition: "I am what I am not." The formation of the subject's ego constructs an illusory self-representation through the negation of cojones, now projected upon our Others, whoever identified as non- machos. Ascribing femininity to our Other forces the construction of female identity to originate with the macho. In fact, the feminine Object, in and of itself, is seen as nothing apart from a masculine Subject which provides a unifying purpose.

The resulting gaze of the white Cuban elite male inscribes effeminacy upon Others who are not macho enough to "make" history, or "provide" for their family or "resist" their subjugation to the dominant macho. Unlike the United States', sexual identity for Cubans is defined in terms of masculinity, not in terms of gender. Women are "the not male." When the gender Other demonstrates hyper-macho qualities, they can be praised for being machos. This was the case with both General Maceo, who was black, and his mother.[4]

The phallic signifier of machismo is located in the cojones. For Cubans, cojones, not the penis, become our cultural "signifier of signifiers." The Other, if male, may have a penis, but lacks the cojones to use it. I conquer, I subdue, I domesticate por mis cojones (by my balls). A distinction is made between cojones, the male testicles, and cojones the metaphoric signifier. Power and authority exhibit cojones, which are in fact derived from social structures, traditions, norms, laws and customs created by those very machos, who usually are white and rich...

Don't know if this is a good read. Ian Lumsden, Machos, Maricones and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996)

Still have not read the novel Before Nigt Falls by Reinaldo Arenas. Here is a hostile review from some SWP member.

Did read one of his previous in the Farewell To The Sea trilogy. Reminescent of Celine. Michael Pugliese



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